The story is more interesting than the title suggests! This guy was arrested for hacking two telecom companies, got released under investigation, then immediately hacked Nvidia before being put under house arrest. After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.
All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education school.
After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.
Fuckin’ bravo. I mean, don’t do that, but on a purely technical level - nice.
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Well, between getting doxxed and annihilating any chance he had at getting a lenient sentencing, the more sensible decision would have probably been to sit on his hands and bide time for a couple months lol.
Given he’s autistic, that’s probably actually impossible for him to do.
Well in that case I guess he’s been cursed by fate in an uncaring world 🤷
But at least we can punish him. Eh?
That’ll teach him for being congenitally neurodivergent.
He didn’t just steal content. He then tried to blackmail the company to not release the content he stole.
Also, while you might be able to justify piracy of a released product in various ways (the common argument is that the would be pirate wouldn’t have paid for the product anyway and digital goods don’t have any cost to the developer from pirating them). But when the product hasn’t been released yet, then it has a much bigger cost because the pirated copy is the only option available and thus it can eat into actual sales. The inability to go through with their planned launch (something big publishers will spend millions hyping) and the release of an unfinished product can absolutely have financial damages. It’s hard to recover from a bad launch.
And that’s without getting into the fact that hackers like this don’t usually stop at just leaking video games or the likes. They’ll also often steal people’s personal information. It’s a lot easier to see the moral issues when it’s your information being stolen.
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There’s no ethical use of ransomware.
deploying Godwin’s Law
Oh yeah? What about ransomware-ing NAZI’s and Hitler?
Is that immoral?
Probably, since you’d have time travel, but not just shoot the bastards.
You’d also need to bring lots of computers with you and first convince the nazis to use them
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<.< Ransomwareing putins computers?
Prior to reading your comment, I considered myself to be a skilled software developer.
The fact he used a FireTV stick to hack Rockstar is pretty impressive lol
I’m guessing those things run Linux. So you would just need a shell.
Though I’m guessing term of his house arrest didn’t allow him to have a keyboard. That part has me curious.
So either a remote control or voice control.
Anyway, kid has too much time on his hands, lol.
They run Android, so not really standard Linux, but yeah.
Install an Android app that lets you ssh into something, bingo bango, you have a full Linux terminal
It says he used cloud services so probably only needed a web browser
bingo bango
what’s up with this phrase coming back into style?
Rock, fire, stick… there’s a theme
Yeah, the theme is “Don’t underestimate Neanderthals, they’re pretty much the granddaddy of Homo sapiens”. Or in short, “primitive, not unintelligent”.
… what?
Da fuck…
Waiting for the movie btw 🍿.
Rain Man 2
Exploit boogaloo
It always warms my heart when a single person is able to outsmart large multi-million/billion dollar tech companies like Nvidia and Rockstar. Really shows how piss poor these companies security can be.
I would definitely look to hire that kid with a high wage just to make sure he doesn’t hacke me again, if I were one of the companies he hacked into. Companies should really think about trying to hire these hackers because then the threats against them might go down ever so slightly.
Counterpoint: he got caught. Whatever his offensive capabilities are, his security posture is evidently lacking. Recruiting a glass canon like that might not work out if you’re looking for help with security hardening.
Counter-counterpoint: he could work as a pentester, where his sole purpose is to just break into things.
Leave the policy making and actual hardening to someone else.
Then comes the issue of a rogue pentester selling his clients zerodays into black market for crypto. Don’t know if the myth of being hired by government agencies is true.
I know nothing about anything but I definitely believe the government would do it. If anyone has the power to keep the hackers acting nice it’s the government. Especially if they write your paychecks.
I would definitely look to hire that kid with a high wage just to make sure he doesn’t hacke me again, if I were one of the companies he hacked into. Companies should really think about trying to hire these hackers because then the threats against them might go down ever so slightly.
I understand your thought, but some people just want to watch the world burn and you definitely don’t want to bring that sort inside.
This guy seems to be driven, capable and lacking the common sense to know when to stop.Companies should really think about trying to hire these hackers because then the threats against them might go down ever so slightly
some companies do.
Jesus Christ, this man is a criminal Tony Starks
With the right education he could be the genius we need. Instead of prison he needs a decent mentor.
seriously, lets put this kid to good use.
This guy was arrested for hacking two telecom companies, got released under investigation, then immediately hacked Nvidia before being put under house arrest. After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.
All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education schoo
wild
The story is more interesting than the title suggests! This guy was arrested for hacking two telecom companies, got released under investigation, then immediately hacked Nvidia before being put under house arrest. After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.
All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education school.
Heh Kid’s handle better be dr0id or some shit: “give me an android terminal and I’ll hack the world”
Uhhhh so when’s that movie coming out? I’d watch the fuck outta that!
This has to be a movie plot…
Seems like a person I like and would love to smoke a joint with, lol
The Fed will offer this guy a job. He’s got a future.
Uh, have you ever seen a federal job application requirements?
#1: not a felon
It doesn’t sound like he’s been convicted of a crime yet…
I mean sure, if you’re the one applying. If they’re offering they can choose whatever the hell criteria they want.
All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education school.
that kid’s my hero
This is a bit of a crossover ep between the movie Hackers and the DS9 ep where Julian basically got introduced to a group of obviously coded autistic anarchists.
He bought the fire stick from the shop right next to the hotel… how the heck did he get Linux on it? Or are they selling those bootleg fire sticks?
He used a remote server (Think AWS, Azure) to hack Rockstar, the Fire Stick was merely a thin client.
I feel guilty now because I bought a new monitor because my old screen space wasn’t cutting it.
British teen from the Lapsus$ gang hacks GTA 6 details in a small town hotel room using an Amazon Fire Stick. Despite compromising British telcos, he’s exposed, caught by authorities, and leaks GTA 6 footage after using the Fire Stick to access cloud services and breach organizations. The tale highlights untapped talent and lack of support in his education system.
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The NSA has no idea whatever do you mean. /s
The kid also stole 14m dollars and was already caught for his previous hacks into other companies.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. He broke the law, the government investigates and enforces the law.
What do you expect to happen? Should the government not investigate crimes against corporations? Should corporations be required to pay for the government investigation into a crime perpetrated against them?
Seems like pretty quickly the governments would only be incentivized to investigate financial crimes against corporations.
Seems like a worse pay-to-play scheme than the alleged thing you’re mad about.
Good tldr
Was reading Hackaday’s source article on BBC and came across this:
That did not deter the duo who continued hacking with Lapsus$ and successfully breached Nvidia, a Silicon Valley tech giant that makes chips for artificial intelligence chatbots, in February 2022.
That’s a funny as fuck way of classifying Nvidia.
Sounds like something written by AI, ironically. That’s the most talked about thing for the moment, so that’s what it picks up on. It doesn’t care if it’s correct.
But it is correct now. Nvidia is making way more AI chips cards whatever then it is GPUs.
It’s not inaccurate though. They do make a AI chips.
They probably make more than than they do GPUs now. Which is depressing.
Gaming GPUs are now only a small part of their revenue.
Nvidia now cares more about AI than gamers, and people now know more about them because the AI chips they make, I have an Nvidia GPU, but I’m looking to get an AMD GPU (Also and intel ARC will also be fine because I upgrade my power supply), I dislike Nvidia a lot now.
I like the Arc series as a concept, because they’re the only value-driven option. Nvidia is just about pumping power and AMD is about trying cool gimmicks like dual clocks and chiplets.
Eventually I hope that the Arc series contributes to an Intel chiplet series similar to the APUs available on handhelds.
Technically impressive but also fuck this kid and other hacker spreading ransomware and stealing user data to hack their accounts too.
Has anyone seen where to check the footage out?? Looks like it’s all been DMCA’d from the majority of the web… I’m not a huge GTA Stan but I kinda wanna see what got leaked!
IIRC it looked a lot like GTA V with some debugging info added. Most changes seem to be under-the-hood.
It did look very similar to GTA V, but it’s also worth noting that pretty much all of the footage was from very early production. It’s likely that they were using less detailed character/world models for testing purposes. I imagine the game will look pretty damn good and modern once the proper lighting and textures are applied.
Ultimately I don’t remember anything incredibly interesting from the videos I saw outside of a couple of story beats revolving around the new main characters. It seemed like most of the videos were pretty much testing certain console and systems at non-specified points in game.
It isn’t very interesting because it’s just a bunch of internal videos that people sent to each other for various reasons. And it’s all out of context because the context would have been provided in an email but we don’t ever see.
Sometimes I’m not sure what some of the footage is trying to demonstrate.
Also most of the animation stuff isn’t complete yet and the AI, at least in the videos I saw was brain dead. So it’s not really representative of the final product and it doesn’t really look like anything.
Never underestimate a kid with free time
power to the people right on
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Wonderful
wait isnt the firestick like a chromecast? how does one even hack with that???
The moment of excitement in one’s hometown and the sensationalist reporting aside, we can’t help feeling sad that a teen with that level of talent evidently wasn’t given the support and encouragement by Oxfordshire’s education system necessary to put it to better use.
What a weird conclusion for the author to draw
They’re a kid and clearly have a passion for computers and technology which could have been tapped for the greater good - the UK is desperate for more people to enter the cybersecurity industry (but not like this). Sadly there are so few teachers left with any passion let alone expertise in computer science, the kid didn’t stand a chance.
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Like in the documentary Swordfish
Perhaps but it can also be very much against them. I worked at a huge UK cybersecurity org and if you had any prior malicious or computer misuse past, you would get rejected. Given how small the UK is, even tiny orgs can be connected to government or public sector meaning they won’t want anyone on the books with a questionable past.
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Steal a couple thousands with identity fraud and account hacking? Jail time, no jobs that need cybersec clearance will touch you with a ten foot pole.
Steal millions+ from multiple large corpos with dedicated cybersec, and you’ll be getting offers out the wazoo, but you’ll be rejecting them because you’re already working for some think tank attached to the NSA.
Source: I made it up
Hopefully that becomes more nuanced with time. Did you hack your school? Or an unrelated entity? What color hat, grey or black? Last known activity? Age of the person at the time?
All questions that need answers presented alongside any history of misuse.
Honestly I can’t imagine that’s a tenable position to take long term. We’ve seen the U.S. govt rethink it’s approach to IT after it was pointed out their failure to intice applicants was a result of stupidly strict Drug Policy and Dress Code. Who knew that a large segment of the IT field don’t like Business Casual and like to smoke weed? Who knew that people drawn to CyberSecurity are likely to have dabbled on the other side of the line prior to making a career out of it?
Dunno why you’re getting so many downvotes… Even if someone disagrees, it’s a pretty reasonable thing to say.
Plus IMO it is kind of a non sequitur to say “if only the schools were better,” as though his motivations could have been satisfied with better homework assignments, lol.
I’m blessed by being on an instance that disables downvotes, so I hadn’t even noticed haha
